Photo by Lucas Alvarado

Paweł CZARAKCZIEW. Cellist, chamber musician, pedagogue. He made his stage debut at the age of six, performing at the Cracow Philharmonic. Four years later, at the Polish embassy in Paris, he played his first concert as a soloist with the orchestra of the Academy of Music in Kraków under the baton of Professor Stanisław Krawczyński. 

Scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, the Rector of the Academy of Music in Kraków, winner of the Educational Award of the Royal Capital City of Kraków. In 2022, he was nominated for the prestigious Fulbright Junior Research Award 2022-2023, as part of which he conducted research at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. 

A graduate of the jazz cello class of Mateusz Pliniewicz. He graduated with honours from the Krzysztof Penderecki Music Academy in Kraków in the class of Zdzisław Łapiński. He has honed his skills under the supervision of Julius Berger at the Leopold-Mozart-Zentrumin Augsburg. He has been developing his chamber music playing under the tutelage of Anna Armatys-Borelli, Kaja Danczowska and Barbara Łypik-Sobaniec.

Outside Poland, he has given concerts in Austria, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Slovakia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He has participated in a number of festivals, e.g. Bachfest Leipzig, Days of Music, Slovak Days, European Union of Music Competition for Youth Festival, Gra w klasykę, La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, Cracow Cello Spring, International Music Festival ‘Emanations’, Faces of Death, Hear the City, Muzyka u Czartoryskich, Tyniec Organ Recitals.  

Czarakcziew’s Experiments with improvised music and with music considered less classical offer him the opportunity to participate in many jazz, dance and music, and music and theatre projects. He has performed at, among others: Jazz under himmelen, International Festival of Wandering Theatres, International Encounters of Dance Theatres, National Open Theatre Encounters, Wadowice Theatre Encounters ‘Zgraja’. 

He is a co-founder of the Cracow Harp Quintet and the Czarakcziew/Kowal Duo.
Since 2020 he has been a cello teacher at the Bronisław Rutkowski Music School in Cracow.

He is a PhD student at the Doctoral School of the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music.